KSP Technology – Regina, SKhttps://ksp.ca
Make Technology your competitive advantageThu, 08 Nov 2018 22:58:35 +0000en-UShourly1AirPod Review!https://ksp.ca/airpod-review/
https://ksp.ca/airpod-review/#respondThu, 06 Apr 2017 21:43:14 +0000http://ksp.ca/?p=5074If you ask 10 people about incredible invention ideas that they’ve had over the course of their life, there is a fair chance that at least one of them would say, “wireless headphones.” There have been a number of different iterations (https://www.cnet.com/news/11-alternative-wireless-earbud-headphones-that-arent-the-apple-airpods/) of wireless headphones in the last couple of years; however, with Apple’s December 2016 release of wireless AirPods and the accompanying lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack on the new iPhone 7, the global Apple addiction is likely going to help along our relationship with these little marvels.

Sound

Since we’re talking about earbud style headphones, it makes sense to begin with sound. The AirPods boast fantastic sound quality and although they do not perform at quite the same level as some of their top-tier wired counterparts, the differences are imperceptible to all but the most discerning. I may even go so far as to say that these are the best Bluetooth headphones I’ve found yet. If you have the power to listen to Metallica on maximum output and simultaneously retain the detail to get your pops off with Prokokiev in the reading room, you are bound to enjoy AirPods. If you need something relative to compare the sound quality to, take the standard Apple EarBuds and multiply the sound quality by about 1.5.

With that out of the way, let’s discuss the experience you get from the AirPods. They come in a contemporary case that also serves as a charger and follow a similar aesthetic to the EarPods you would have received when purchasing an older iPhone model – minus the chord. While you may be thinking that there is no way that these will stay in your ear by themselves, anecdotal evidence from runners and office workers alike suggest that they do stay put quite nicely, though they may not necessarily feel as snug as an earphone with a silicon insert might. The risk of loss for these headphones certainly does exist, but lay more in the realm of, “I set them down and one fell into a couch cushion, never to be seen or heard from again.” The case/charger is supposed to help with this since they’re of no use dead. Lastly, say what you will about it, there is a strap (https://www.spigen.com/products/airpod-strap?variant=27600250113) available for the loss averse user.

Battery

For such a small package, one wouldn’t expect the battery to worth its weight in salt, or Potash for us Saskatchewan folk. If you are inclined to listen music at high levels for extended periods of time, you would be right. On the other hand, if you listen at “safe” levels, Apple’s claim of five hours of operating time per charge is accurate. On top of that, once fully charged, the Lightning port equipped case has the capacity to charge the AirPods over four times, with each charge taking about 15 minutes.

Functionality (The Meat and Potatoes)

The AirPods, like all of Apples other integrated tech, do not disappoint when it comes to connectivity. Open the AirPods case next to your phone and pair using your phone. Presto. In-ear = connected, out-of-ear = disconnected, take one AirPod out = pause.

Beware if you’re not a fan of Siri. While you will be miles ahead of the guy at the airport having a 10-minute conversation with his iPhone on speaker, the AirPods are still heavily reliant on Siri to change tracks, adjust volume, etc. It’s incredibly useful to be able to tap your ear twice and dial a phone call, though you can still control everything from your phone if Siri is not your cup of tea.

Some of the most exciting features involve what you can do with the AirPods. They can be paired with iPhones, Apple Watches, iPads, Macs/Macbooks, Apple TV, and even with Android, Windows, and other devices. Apple may be renowned for closed systems, but it is nice that they didn’t extend this ideology to their headphones.

Sound and microphone are likely the best wireless set on the market, considering the microphone is in the earpiece.

With the case on hand, you may be able to get through 24 hours between case charges.

Pairing is a breeze with iPhones and similarly easy with other devices.

A relatively snug fit with no wire to be concerned about, keep an eye out for subsequent releases with silicon inserts for improved fit.

Cons:

Price point is on par with Apple products, but you do get what you pay for as usual.

Your relationship with Siri must be developed to use AirPods without additional input from your device. In-line controllers for wired headphones have done a great job of providing unobtrusive control on the go.

High potential for loss, however that can be said for all wireless headphones.

No noise cancelling technology for playback.

Final Thoughts

If you are committed to the Apple aesthetic and have the coin to spare, the AirPods will give you a better experience in terms of sound, connectivity, and convenience than any of its counterparts, Apple or otherwise. If you are leery about Siri, prone to loss, or looking for an option with noise cancelling features, it may be in your best interest to evaluate other options.

]]>https://ksp.ca/airpod-review/feed/0Sask Businesses Beware!! Is Your Data Protected?https://ksp.ca/sask-businesses-beware-is-your-data-protected/
https://ksp.ca/sask-businesses-beware-is-your-data-protected/#respondFri, 09 Dec 2016 21:54:13 +0000http://ksp.ca/?p=5037Imagine that all of your most valuable treasures are stored in the safety of your home. One morning, you run out to grab a few groceries and accidentally leave a window open just a crack. (We’ve all done it!) While you’re gone, someone enters your home, doesn’t take anything, but changes the security system and all of the locks. You come home to find that there is no way into your house. Your locks are changed, security system deactivated, and there are bars on all of the windows. You go to the window and can see that everything is still there but you can’t get to it. You notice a note attached to the door that reads, “To get access to the keys, please send $1000 to…” What would you do?

Now here is a real world example. This actually happened to a local business that came to us for help. We got the call on a Tuesday morning, “We have a popup notification on our computers saying that we need to pay 1 bitcoin to get the key to decrypt our files. We have payroll coming up on Friday and we can’t access any files or anything on our network. Can you help?” The business owner felt helpless. These things happen not only to the Walmarts, Home Depots, and Ashley Madisons of the world, they can (and do) happen to businesses right here in Saskatchewan.

What happened? Well… their server was vulnerable to brute force attacks. The hacker(s) kept trying different passwords until they broke into their server. Once inside, they didn’t actually delete or steal any of the data. Instead, the hackers encrypted every program and file stored on their network. In order to get the unlock ‘key’ to get their data back, the hackers demanded 1 bitcoin (current approx. value $1000) as payment for the key. Now you may be saying, “Why didn’t they just recover their data from their backups?” Unfortunately, their previous provider failed to have backups setup properly for them.

Because our team at KSP Technology had researched and tested different solutions, we had the know-how to quickly and easily help these people out. We recovered the programs and files from the server and had the company back up and running in less than 24 hours. Since then, they’ve decided to partner with us to handle their IT needs. We have migrated the company’s server to a Hosted Desktop environment, increased overall security of their network, and have all of their data backed up properly.

It’s easy to dismiss the story as “folklore,” if you’ve never felt the pain of losing your data. But ask yourself: how would it affect your business if you were unable to access your data? What is the potential loss of revenue that could occur if your business network was down for a day? A week? A month? I hate ‘scare tactics’, and hopefully you never get hit with a Ransomware/CryptoLocker virus, but you should talk to your IT provider about what measures they’ve put in place to protect you from such an attack. People have house insurance, not because they think their house will burn down but because they need the comfort of knowing they are protected in the event of a disaster.

Did you know the iTunes app store used to limit the price of an app to $999.99? Surprisingly, there are now some apps that cost that much AND people actually downloaded them. There are many apps in that price range that have NEVER been downloaded – no surprise there. In our search for the most expensive app, we found only one over the ever so popular threshold of $999.99. Read on to find out which one!

Top 6 most expensive apps in the iTunes store

CyberTuner– a $999.99 app that has 64 reviews. Cyber Tuner is for piano tuners, an amazing tool that you can bring with you, where you go now that it’s on your phone.

MobiGage NDI– a $999.99 app that is used for the inspection of manufactured parts and assemblies. Even factories are getting into the 21st century with making factory maintenance a task done on ones mobile phone. No longer are expensive salaried employees kept around to test the plant, a general manager can do it from his or her iPhone.

QSFFStats– a $999.99 app that is used for flag football leagues. I kid you not, it’ll track your team stats….for a cool thousand dollars. Do let us know what you think of this one if you download it!

vueCAD Pro– for $999.99 you get an app that does native CAD design, 3D visualizations and markup. Cool!

Agro– a $999.99 app that allows agronomists to store client information, chemical requirements, crops and pest information, create and simultaneously email local suppliers to prepare and hold chemicals required, eliminate the need to use an office to produce reports. They even say it’ll save up to 15 hours per week for “corporate” users. That’s a lot of episodes of Judge Judy!

And finally the app that increased the limit on the cost of a single app: iVIP Black is the most expensive app we could find.

iVIP Black – a $1,199.99 app that still have no reviews (possibly because no one downloaded it yet). The app seems promising, with a VIP status you’ll get special treatment, access to private chefs, access to private clubs and GEO notifications for any other “VIP” deals. Seems a little too rich for my blood.

What was our most expensive app purchase in the KSP office?

That would go to Kevin and the ForeFlight Mobile App. The app is free but the in app purchases are around $150 for the US version and the Canadian version, making a total of just over $300. Not bad for an amateur pilot!

What was your most expensive app purchase? We want to know! Leave your expensive apps in the comments below. Were they worth the price?

Do you know how many apps store your personal information?! Do you know how many apps share your information to advertisers? Do you know how many apps connect to third party websites and share data about you and your daily life?

No, most apps aren’t doing anything malicious but you should know exactly what apps are sharing your information and with whom. It can be scary when you think about a telecommunications company knowing every movement you make and establishment you frequent. We’ve included a couple of videos we think you should watch on privacy and how different websites and apps are tracking your life via your smartphone.

So how do you find out what apps share personal information with advertisers and other companies? Well Luigi Vigneri and his team from Eurecom in France developed software to track what url’s are accessed by any app on your phone.

“Vigneri and co began by downloading over 2,000 free apps from all 25 categories on the Google Play store. They then launched each app on a Samsung Galaxy SIII running Android version 4.1.2 that was set up to channel all traffic through the team’s server. This recorded all the urls that each app attempted to contact. . . .

. . . In total, the apps connect to a mind-boggling 250,000 different urls across almost 2,000 top level domains. And while most attempt to connect to just a handful of ad and tracking sites, some are much more prolific.”

In other countries, people seem to be asking the same question. In Germany, Malte Spitz was astounded when he found out how much information his phone company collected about him. Here’s is his TED talk explaining his journey:

The information gathered about you when you visit a single website is alarming. This TED talk highlights the data gathered from viewing a single website.

It can be surprising when you see the data. The vast amount of knowledge our phones have on us is incredible. I do think that the more people that know about it, the harder it will be for companies to use it in malicious means but there will always be those outliers.

Protect yourself. Be careful where you and your family are visiting online. Run robust spyware and anti-virus software to ensure you’re monitoring your computer and files on a regular schedule.

If you have more questions about your privacy, please don’t hesitate to ask the folks here at KSP, or Tweet us at @ksptechnology.

How fast is your website?

In the next year or two, this is going to be a hot topic. Why? Because Google is now using site speed as a ranking indicator. Beyond Google results being affected, visitors to a website are less likely to stay on a longer loading page. After 3 seconds, approximately 40% of your audience leaves looking for a faster option of what you were about to provide.

Besides doing it for Google, your website visitors want a website that loads fast, no matter what device it loads on. With more and more mobile devices and Google algorithm updates called “Mobilegeddon”, your website not only needs to be fast but it needs to be compatible for mobile and tablets as well.

Godaddy and other “Cloud” hosting companies over sell the space on their servers. You never really know what you’re getting when you’ve hired a company who’s headquarters are over seas. So how do you know how fast your website is? Simple, there are several free tools that will tell you how many seconds it takes for your website to load. The free tools to test the speed of your website are: Pingdom, Google Page Speed Insights, and Web Page Test.

We used the Pingdom tool to determine the speeds below. Check your website to see how you stack up. Below are 21 websites we tested to see how fast their website was and who their host is. If “Internal” is listed, when search for the hosting company we could only find internal records that identify. The page load times vary but you can see when you have a dedicated host, your website is going to load faster.

How does your website measure up?

Website

Website Host

Page Load Time

Morsky.ca

KSP

3.29 seconds

LFCHosting.com

Loosefoot

7.07 seconds

Queencityirrigation.com

Bluehost

4.70 seconds

Regina.ca

Internal

5.11 seconds

TheDiplomatSteakhouse.com

KSP

1.89 seconds

ReginaVolleyballClub.com

Bluehost

3.06 seconds

LSsecurity.ca

KSP

1.77 seconds

HRF.sk.ca

Internal

6.39 seconds

CapitalFordLincoln.ca

Netfirms

2.80 seconds

URegina.ca

Internal

3.65 seconds

USask.ca

Internal

1.41 seconds

SaskPower.com

Internal

3.75 seconds

SGI.sk.ca

Internal

2.56 seconds

TornadoHunter.com

KSP

0.812 seconds

TrademarkHomes.ca

Bluehost

3.62 seconds

Leaderpost.com

Post Media

30+ seconds

GlobalNews.ca

Shaw Cable

7.60 seconds

StrategyLab.ca

KSP Hosting

2.80 seconds

SaskPolyTech.ca

Internal

2.24 seconds

SaskNDP.ca

Fact Hosting

2.64 seconds

SaskParty.com

Domains at Cost Hosting

2.88 seconds

]]>https://ksp.ca/how-fast-is-your-website-google-knows/feed/0The Next in Electric Car Technology: Tires That Charge Your Battery On The Gohttps://ksp.ca/the-next-in-electric-car-technology-tires-that-charge-your-battery-on-the-go-2/
https://ksp.ca/the-next-in-electric-car-technology-tires-that-charge-your-battery-on-the-go-2/#respondWed, 06 May 2015 20:49:45 +0000http://ksp.ca/?p=4567Do you have range anxiety?

You’ve likely suffered from range anxiety if you own an electric car and wonder if you have enough battery power to reach your destination!

The greatest fear of an electric car driver is traveling too far from home and running out of juice. Batteries in these cars have progressively got better and better but you still can’t go on a long road trip in your Tesla Model S. Until now! When you think you’re about to run out of battery power, your tires will end up powering your car.

Smart technology of the future will use energy that is wasted in the process and convert it into working energy. This is the concept behind what Goodyear unveiled at the Geneva Auto show. The energy released in your tires heating up on the road can now be used to charge the battery in your Prius. The more energy efficient our cars are, the better for everyone in our world. This could be a starting point for many different technologies that could use wasted energy.

It may be some time before that technology hits the cold streets of Regina but what a brilliant way to reuse some energy that is currently being wasted on every tire of every vehicle on the road!

At SXSW this year, the app enthusiasts finally had something to rave about. Introducing the first breakthrough app to be revealed to a large audience at South by Southwest since Foursquare – everyone, meet Meerkat.

Meerkat is an app the allows the user to use the camera in a smart phone as a live web cam. When you activate Meerkat, it lets your followers on Twitter know you’re live streaming video. When you end the streaming or close the app, the videos is gone. It’s not saved or stored or kept on file, just streams your video, like a window into your world.

This, for obvious reason, got a lot of people in the tech industry excited. Launching at the infamous SXSW conference was a smart way to get the initial 100,000 downloads. Everyone was downloading Meerkat. Well that was until Twitter found out. Twitter didn’t like this much. After all, Meerkat was using networks people had already established on Twitter to broadcast to. Smart strategy really, until Twitter doesn’t want you using their network anymore.

What we found out after SXSW is that a couple months prior, Twitter acquired a company that does something peculiarly similar. Periscope, an app that offers similar features to Meerkat but is owned by Twitter.

And the Twitterrati were shut down.

It didn’t take long for Twitter to notify the owners of Meerkat that they will no longer have access to the Twitter Social Graph (where Twitter tracks who follows who), basically making Twitter useless to Meerkat. But a defensive move against an opponent signals a sign of assumed weakness. Is Twitter worried that Meerkat already has the marketshare of mobile streaming?

Enter Periscope. Twitter’s live streaming app and Meerkat competitor. They look remarkably similar but the edge has to go to Periscope as it has more features and is backed by Twitter’s already massive network. Periscope seems like the App with more options for what you want to do with live streaming but there is certainly something to be said about going to market first. Meerkat has much more momentum coming off a great launch at SXSW.

It may not be whether or not Meerkat is going to beat out Periscope or vice versa, the question we are asking, are live streaming apps here to stay? What other applications do live streaming apps have other than festivals, shows, vacations, or entertainment?

1. Apple sold 411,000 iPhones per day in 2013. That’s right, 150 million iPhones were sold in the year making an astounding 411,000 on average sold per day. If you really want to get technical, Apple sold 17,123 iPhones per hour in 2013 or 258 iPhones sold on average per minute. That is a lot of iPhones.

2. Apple now has a mind-boggling $178,000,000,000 in cash. With that they could buy Twitter, Box, Pandora, LinkedIn, Yahoo, AOL, Groupon, Zynga, Shutterfly, Yelp & GoPro, with $48B in cash left over. Really puts it into perspective when you compare to other companies in the technology sector. OR if you don’t want to compare to some of the tech giants, with that kind of money they could buy Ford, GM, and Tesla and still have $41.3 billion left over. Either way, Apple as a lot of cash.

3. If Apple distributed its cash to the 320 million Americans, each person would receive $556. Want to kickstart the economy? Try giving away all of your cash on hand! You may be out of business but you’re going to make millions of Americans prosper…..or have one crazy $556 dollar night out or purchase $556 hotdogs at Costco.

I’d vote for the Costco option, everyone likes Costco hotdogs.

4. One day late in January 2015 overnight Apple’s market capitalization grew by 58 billon dollars. To put $58,000,000,000 in context, Ford is worth $56,660,000,000. Upon hearing the company beat quarterly earnings, Apple in one night gained $58 billion in market capitalization. Market Capitalization is based on a companies share price multiplied by the amount of shares outstanding. If your investors think your company should be valued at more than it is, generally your stock price will improve. You could say that investors are quite happy with how Apple has been doing.

5. Apple earns US$300,000 per minute. Selling 258 phones per minute it makes sense that Apple makes $300,000 per minutes. Sometimes you sit back in awe of what this tech giant has done.

6. Everything you say to Siri is sent to Apple, analyzed and stored. To quote Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”, just because you can ask Siri anything you want, doesn’t mean you should ask Siri anything you want. Some things are better left not talked about.

Privacy in this post-internet world will constantly be under attack as more and more companies and brands want better data on their customers. Companies that don’t thoroughly understand what customer information is being used for can come under scrutiny in the future as data leaks, and hacks become more and more main stream. Don’t let this happen to you, understand what information you’re keeping as well as ‘why’ you’re keeping it. And no “because we want to sell it in the future” is not a viable option.

7. Every Apple iPhone ad displays the time as 9:41 AM, the time Steve Jobs unveiled it in 2007. You’re probably opening a new tab and looking up every iPhone ad since 2007. Everything to Steve Jobs had meaning, even the minute details, that’s what made his designs so different. So it’s to no surprise that the time displayed on the phone has to have a meaning.

8. In Japan’s Apple Store, there was a fan who started waiting in line 7 months early for iPhone 6. Can you believe that? I mean Snapchat is pretty revolutionary but waiting in line for 7 months for a device that slightly marginally better than the iPhone 5?!

9. 60% of apps in the Apple App Store have never been downloaded. Does it surprise you? How many people have you heard say, “do I have just the best idea for an app that’s going to be worth billions” then they go on to ramble off about some made up problem they think people have and how their revolutionary app is going to solve it. 60% makes sense. The fact that it’s not that difficult to build an app anymore and as it gets easier more and more useless apps are created.

But you know what they say, if you want to create a remarkable app, one that really gets talked about, create lots and lots of apps. Eventually you’ll get you one.

10. Apple’s net income last quarter was $18 billion, the largest quarterly earnings for any company ever. Now they’re just trying to break records. I mean c’mon, best quarter earnings ever?! Think about all the amazing organizations that have had large profits, majority marketshare, ever increasing growth curves and none of them compare to how Apple did in the 4th quarter of their 2014.

11. Apple CEO Tim Cook is the first and currently only openly gay person in the Fortune 500. After what happened at the Olympics in 2014 there has been a worldwide increase in support for all different lifestyles. It’s pretty cool Tim Cook is one of those leaders who will help our world be more accepting of peoples differences.

]]>https://ksp.ca/11-amazing-facts-you-never-knew-about-apple/feed/0Do You Know Who The Third Largest Phone Maker in the World Is?https://ksp.ca/do-you-know-who-the-third-largest-phone-maker-in-the-world-is/
https://ksp.ca/do-you-know-who-the-third-largest-phone-maker-in-the-world-is/#respondMon, 16 Mar 2015 07:29:20 +0000http://dev.ksp.ca/?p=4491

Hint: It’s not Motorola, Nokia, Blackberry or HTC.

Hello Moto Xiaomi. Welcome the world’s third largest smartphone maker. A once small startup, now Xiaomi employs 5,000 people in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia. They began operations in 2010, sold their first phone in 2011, and in 2014, three short years later, they sold over 60 million phones.

Our entire world has gone mobile. I teach a class at Sask Poly Technic in Regina and every year for the past three years I’ve polled the class as to how many people have smart phones. Every year usually only one person doesn’t have a smart phone (but ironically enough they are always quit to whip out their flip phone circa 2003). No wonder this young startup in China has grown exponentially over the past half decade. They’re making something that (almost) everyone in the developed and undeveloped world use every day; a smart phone.

The plot twist of this story is that Xiaomi has no plans of coming into North America any time soon. At one time a hot bed for the latest and greatest technology is now on a list of countries tech giants may or my not enter. The times are sure changing. A sign that North America may, in fact, not be the centre of the Universe, these growing third world countries are maturing into global business powerhouses. If North America doesn’t pick up it’s digital socks and start developing the worlds bleeding edge technology, it won’t be only the third most popular phone that’ll be coming out of China but everything else we use in our daily lives.

]]>https://ksp.ca/do-you-know-who-the-third-largest-phone-maker-in-the-world-is/feed/0The First Ever Levitating Bluetooth Speakerhttps://ksp.ca/the-first-ever-levitating-bluetooth-speaker/
https://ksp.ca/the-first-ever-levitating-bluetooth-speaker/#respondMon, 09 Mar 2015 06:59:06 +0000http://ksp.ca/?p=3915Want to buy the greatest present ever for the tech-lover in your family? Welcome the OM/ONE, the worlds first levitating speaker. All the kids around the water cooler will be talking about your one-of-a-kind levitating speaker. Yes, you read correctly – this speaker levitates, floats, hovers, flies around in one place and will become the center piece at your next party.

Are you ready for a sound grenade? This bad boy will transform any boring room into an experience equal to a front seat at the Regina Symphony Orchestra. You don’t have to compromise sound when you use a Bluetooth speaker, the levitating wonder packs a sound punch when it comes to filling up a room with your favourite Nickelback album.

Check out the video below. The guy that came up with it is like the god of sound.

Here at the KSP Technology office, we are always looking for cool technology. Expected date of awesomeness: March/Apr 2015!